Season 2 of our favorite sci-fi/time travel series was released on the 21st of June, THANK YOU NETFLIX FOR HAVING US WAIT SO LONG! If you haven’t watched Season 1, here are our reviews so you can get caught up! It was really worth the wait. Upon it’s arrival, I had so many questions unanswered from the first season that I was hoping to just get answers as soon as the first episode of season two began. MAANNN. I was wrong, IN FACT, the series began in a different timeline that we haven’t been to before and introduced us to two characters that we haven’t met. I knew right then and there, that I needed to draw for my notepad and start keeping track of what the hell was going on.
So if you haven’t noticed by now, we are currently keeping track of FIVE, different timelines: 1921, 1954, 1987, 2019 (the time line that started it all for us), 2020 ( the actual year of the apocalypse), and a post apocalyptic year 2053. All of which are connected through this unexplained, unknown cosmic phenomena. Now we all know that season 1 stimulated the excitement of discovery as the pieces to this puzzle were coming together, however; we ended up with a deeper and more action packed second season, which occasionally was still confusing. What do I mean by confusing you ask? Well, keeping track of five timelines and the events that simultaneously happen within the respected timelines is mind boggling enough, not to mention the connections between the four families of Winden.
Despite the many unanswered questions, in Season 2 we are starting to figure things out. There are MULTIPLE time travelers who visit their parents, their grandchildren and even their OWN past. How trippy is it to have the ability to travel in time? Now, we can understand why their are competing factions who are warring with one another to take control of time itself, using any means necessary; kidnapping and murdering for their cause (flashback to Season 1 with the missing kids and their bodies ending up in different timelines). There is also a book that holds clues about time travel and how to actually do it. Heres the kicker: It only exists because someone from the future brought it to the past. Now the person to receive this book in the past will have the knowledge of time travel, despite it ALREADY being known by someone else in the future. C’mon, disaster is bound to follow if this kind of information falls into the wrong hands…right?
Jonas, who realized that if he was to set everything right, he would never be born. OR SO HE IS TOLD. As I mentioned earlier, there are multiple time travelers, those people, including Jonas who met his older self in the 80’s when he was really close to bringing Mikkel AKA Michael, his father back to 2019. Young Noah, in the 1920s also meets his older self when he is brought under the tutelage of Adam. 2050’s Claudia travels back to 1980s to tell herself about time travel and to give her the book. (AHA. Now you know which book I am referring to). Although it seems cool, they are dealing with the frustration of not being able to explain to their loved ones and friends about what is going to happen for fear of changing the course of history. LITTLE DO THEY KNOW, a lot has changed.
This season is so twisted and addicting, it really leaves you on the edge of your seat, anticipating what’s going to happen next. Dark really gives an insight to how time travel would work, hypothetically of course. The series outlines various paradoxes and theories by using the residents of Winden to act them all out and when HG Tannhaus explains a certain paradox or theory, you can hear the viewers go: “OOOOOOOOHH, THAT MAKES TOTAL SENSE!!” I’ve caught myself saying that numerous times throughout the series, despite not having much knowledge on it before. You see, once time travel is invented, time travel has always been invented. Everything is connected, a never ending circle. Everything that takes place now is a set of series of events that can’t be changed, must not be changed, unless some tragedy or disaster occurs, which brings me to the topic of free will. It seems as though free will is never acted upon in this series because there is always some form of consequence for your actions.
In Dark, we see the children of Winden, specifically from the four families are doomed to act out the sins of their parents. The concept of sin and predestined repetition have relevant reflections in the real world. Does any of this sound familiar in history? This raises me to ask the question: How are we supposed to develop and become better when there is nothing we can do to stop bad things from happening? The catastrophe that hit Winden takes place every 33 years and Dark in its eerie and mysterious wisdom haunts us with that catastrophe every episode of the second season. If you haven’t seen the Season 2, I highly recommend you do, its worth a binge.
